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EU, China summit short on specifics

The European Union and China agreed at a summit in Prague yesterday that they should work together to find a way out of the current economic crisis, to stimulate trade and to combat climate change. But they failed to decide on specific measures to meet any of these challenges.

“We both recognise that it is important for us to work together, to ride out the storm and make our contribution to an early world economic recovery,” Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, told reporters in Prague.

China is one of the world’s top polluters and its participation is critical for the success of a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions. The United Nations will host a conference in Copenhagen in December to agree the deal.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said that all sides should openly declare their positions on climate change in the run-up to Copenhagen. “The EU has already done it to a large extent,” Barroso said. “The United States is moving in the right direction… I am sure that China will also engage fully.”

China expects to be treated as a developing country and to be exempted from tough, binding targets for the world’s leading economies. It also wants the rich countries to fund green technologies in China.

Yesterday’s summit had originally been scheduled for last December but was cancelled at the last minute by China in retaliation for a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama. France was holding the EU’s rotating presidency at the time. Czech President Václav Klaus hosted yesterday’s summit on behalf of the Czech EU presidency.

The two sides agreed that the next EU-China summit should be held in Beijing in the second half of this year.